1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods, apparatus and computer-code for acquiring and presenting information describing database performance.
2. Related Art
There is an ongoing need for tools and techniques for improved database tuning.
In particular, there is need for tools and techniques which ‘push’ the most relevant information about database performance to database administrators (DBAs).
When database statements execute, it is common for tables and/or indexes to be read. At a time that the table or index is being read, the database statement may be forced to ‘wait’ for a table-read or index-read operation to complete, for ‘moving on’ to additional operations. In the event that one or more I/O operations are ‘too slow’ (i.e. because of a poorly defined index or schema and/or because of poor infrastructure such as lack of RAM or a poorly-performing disk or network card), the performance of any given statement, or a group of statements, may suffer.
Unfortunately, it is often difficult to track down the causes of such ‘slow I/O’ operations.
There is an ongoing need for tools and techniques which help a information does not necessarily allow a DBA to draw the “proper conclusions” as to (i) the cause of excessive wait times; and (ii) how to tune the particular object and/or statements in order to achieve better database performance.